Rest (Part 1)

Definition: verb (used without object)

to refresh oneself, as by sleeping, lying down, or relaxing.

to relieve weariness by cessation of exertion or labor.

Integral to any fitness or wellness program is rest … along with exercise, diet and mental acuity. However, it is often the least recognized component of a physical regimen because it is the hardest component to do successfully. Let’s face the facts, we are busy people in a busy world. We try to make time for everything else … and at the end of the day, because we can’t go any more, we rest. However, that type of rest (or sleep) may not be complete nor truly beneficial.

Molly Hunsinger, on January 27, 2017 on the TeleWellness Blog, posted the 7 Components of good health. One of the components that she lists is sleep. Concerning sleep she states:

Sleep is nature’s restoration period and significantly affects your overall physical and mental health. While you sleep your body restores your immune system, your nervous system, and even your muscular and skeletal systems. Certain hormones and brain-related proteins also restore while you sleep. So if you don’t sleep well or enough (or both), your body doesn’t get the time it needs to rejuvenate itself, and it slowly lags behind in its optimal ability to function—over the long haul, you function less than optimally with many systems affected.

Sleep, by definition, is one aspect of the concept of rest. As stated above, it is essential to maintaining good physical and mental health. What’s good for the physical is also good for the spiritual. Now, before I go any further, the Bible does make a clear distinction between spiritual sleep and spiritual rest. Proverbs 24: 33-34 warns us not to allow spiritual sleep or slumber to creep into our lives. This type of sleep is very dangerous because it makes us unconscious to the alertness that God wants us to constantly have in our souls. We can rest but we must always be aware!

Spiritual rest can best be described by Jesus’ own words to his disciples in Matthew 11: 28-30.

²⁸ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The word rest in this passage means to repose or to refresh. The yoke that Jesus speaks of is akin to the “beam” or harness that was used to steer oxen (plural) when pulling a cart or farming equipment to perform work in the field. The underlying concept is servitude. So what Jesus was saying was that all are under one yoke or another. The devil provides a yoke that is more like a shackle that makes the soul weary and is hard. He causes people to become servants to sin. Jesus, on the other hand, provides a different type of yoke or servitude. It’s light because it is based in love. We must willingly be in subjection to the Father and seek to know more of him with a heart that trusts him. He will lead us gently yet effectively along life’s journey. Once we rest in him the yoke or servitude is not heavy and what He asks us to do is not hard.

The yoke, in biblical times, was used to keep the oxen in a straight path, going in the right direction. The natural yoke had to be heavy to counteract the massive size of the oxen and the fact that without it they would go their own way. So too is the yoke that our Lord spoke of … It’s purpose is to keep us on a straight path headed in the right direction. It becomes easier and easier as we learn more of his ways and cease more from our own ways.

The Hebrew writer in Hebrews chapter 4 speaks very clearly of this type of rest. He reminds us that rest is as old as creation itself (Hebrews 4:4). God did rest from all of his works on the 7th day of the Creation. He goes on to help us to understand that the rest that God wants us to enter into is not necessarily physical rest but a rest where we cease from all of our labors (Hebrews 4:10). Jesus came to give us that rest. However, Hebrews 4: 11 sums up how we are to obtain that rest:

Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

That idea is a paradox. Labor and rest do not seem to go together. However, if you think of us as those oxen, we have to work at not wanting to go our own way; staying under the servitude of God. It can be a lot of work to keep our will and our way under submission to God and his will. However, if we love Him, we WILL work to please him and to keep ourselves in check.

So as with our physical bodies, proper rest helps in its physical and mental development, the same goes with our souls. Proper spiritual rest helps in our spiritual development which in turn will ultimately benefit the entire body of Christ. If we as individuals learn to be at rest, in the Lord, then we are more effective in bearing one another’s burdens. As a collective body, when we are at rest and in submission to God’s will then we can be more effective in a world that does not know peace and rest. Our rest will become the witness.

Part 2 will look at the physical and mental help that takes place when we develop spiritually.